Font metrics change after Save As...

[russ]

I am evaluating FontCreator 5.6. My goal is to simply remap our application's TrueType font from Code Page 850 to Code Page 1252, and perhaps add a few characters.

To begin, I opened our old font and performed a Save As. Then I installed the new font and opened our application. I noticed the font width had changed. It looked like it might be that the intercharacter gap had increased, but it is hard to tell. Our application uses WYSIWYG, so correct character sizing is very important.

Can I expect the metrics to change with a Save As... operation, and, if so, what settings should I review to duplicate the original font? The font is about 10 years old, and I believe was created with FontMonger.

Thanks in advance.

Russ

[russ]

I found that the average character width metric had changed. The setting "Recalc average char width" in Options | Font is checked by default. Apparently, the method used to calculate this setting in the original font differed slightly from the method used by Font Creator.

The result is opening and saving the font caused the avg char width to be recalculated, and a different value was stored in the font. Once I turned of the auto Recalc setting, the font sized correctly.

I found that there are two methods used by FontCreator, depending on the Version setting in Format | Settings | Ranges. My setting was Version 0, which is probably the best setting for an old font. Using Version 3 caused a wildly different value to be calculated, as that uses all glyphs. Previous versions (0,1,2) use lowercase a - z glyphs only. However, I believe the algorithm, i.e. weight factors, may not have been standardized years ago, or perhaps just not implemented correctly.

[Erwin Denissen]

Thanks for letting us know how you've managed to solve the problem. And yes, in your case it is best to leave the version value as it is.